Unshod Quills

Francesca Castaño and Carmen Castaño Mendez of Spain on the themes of transportation and beasts. 

Carmen Castaño Mendez, "A Little Beast," photograph on the theme of beasts

Wheel of Fortune

Thus,
returning home
the last embers of the working week
fade in the hand
that holds
tightly
to the subway strap.
Panting—
but finally free
of the everyday armour
that binds
this life
we live
curling up
in continuous
repetitions—

I come up from
the subterranean swarm
dazzled by the street
clatter of people coming
and going
when a fortune teller
takes my hand
and begins to read
it:
There, you see—
she chatters
as I get lost
in the lines of my palm —
I see you
spinning
circling,
stirring….

Author and Artist Biography

Francesca Castaño lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. She is a Spaniard who writes in English. She loves her man and her son,  poetry and cooking. Her master’s thesis,  “The Limitless Self: Desire and Transgression in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Written on the Body,” was published by the University of Barcelona, in February 2010. Her poems have appeared in The Bruised Peach Press, and The Internationalwordbank.

Carmen Castaño Mendez, was born in Spain and currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand. She was featured as a finalist in the Auckland Festival of Photography Photo Day for the last 3 years. Her photos have also appeared in The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, February 2011.

Photo: Jianjue bu zou! (We Refuse To Leave!) Bjorn Wahlstrom, on "When We Two Parted."

Poetry and photography by  Shanghai’s Björn Wahlström 

I Look At You Shanghai

– When We Two Parted

Shanghai, April 2011

I look at you Shanghai. I look at you, you look away.

But mind you Shanghai, this is not a love song,
and fuck the broken hearted,
you know what you did to lose what you had,
you all do, as do I.

You gave me everything Shanghai, all you had to offer,
a billion RMB in an LV man-bag, prime real estate in Lujiazui, an uncle in politics,
and a mink mini-skirt on a late night Mint massacre.

That’s right, I know you Shanghai.

I’d race along your gaojia at approaching midnight,
drink and drive from Puxi to Gotham City,
drink and fuck whoever with an ever numbing sense of self-pity,
as M. closes at two,
I’d spend hours on hands and knees by the Jiangpu,
drinking from your veins Shanghai,
as you would want it,
as you demand that I do,
you dirty beautiful whore, you
pulled my head down by the hair, down under the surface,
and refused to let me die.

I look at you Shanghai, and you look away.

In stars and pearls you dress yourself,
my darling mistress of 2008, back when I owned you,
that’s right Shanghai I owned you, I fucking owned you,
and you loved it how i I’d treat you like a slut back then,
I’d do whatever and you’d follow,
I still found the green alleys of the French Concession charming back then,
I’d text you and you’d join, your own plans instantly over board,
summer evening strolls,
no worries, no panties,
always on the first date, and always closing.

Back then I was mean to you Shanghai, and you never said a word. It goes to your credit.

I look at you Shanghai. You look away.

I cry in Jing’an, but I get wasted in the French Concession,
with all the other 10 million homeless people here,
like all the other secretly exiled poor fucks here,
tequila to forget and drugs for the pain,
pints for the wicked and wine bars for the vain,

Shanghai, you keeper of tabs, you high roller; shine you crazy diamond.

Shine.

I look at you Shanghai, I look at you but I have no idea what you are thinking Shanghai, right now in this moment, right here in this forgotten shitty bar on Wuning Lu where I happen to be now in early 2011,
our fling long gone,
dust and dirty tap water,
rust and 9-5 to no good end.

You see I loved you those first years, I did
I just didn’t understand you, I didn’t know how to show it.

Whatever.

You wear a fashionably short evening gown tonight,
and I was the one who helped you with the zipper in the back, Shanghai, only to see that beautiful back walk away.
That sounds sad, but to you it’s just another bottom line.

I look at you Shanghai and I imagine
that your eyes have a secret warmth for me,
black hole suns for the homeless, a tiny bit of
hot burning love for me, “real” feelings for me, ha!

I look at you Shanghai. You look away.

This is not a rant

Shanghai

you crazy bitch, you lovely creature you,

This is a

requiem.

Author Biography

Born sometime in late 70s Stockholm, Sweden, Björn Wahlström  is editor and co-founder of HAL Publications. A sometime writer, he’s a promoter of China based literature, including his own.

After a six year stint in sinologist academia Bjorn became a corporate stooge in 2005, two years after first moving to China. Despite this severe digression, he maintained his interest in the arts and is a passionate patron and promoter of the literary scene in Shanghai, having conceived and founded the city’s most popular English based writers’ group.

His creative writing is colored by a peculiar insight into China, and  by his broad familiarity of Western and Eastern philosophy. Bursts of cynical laowaisims (read: foreignerisms) are tempered with a genuine appreciation and understanding of China, a sane madman in a crazy land. Bjorn is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

Portland poet John Sibley Williams on the themes of mirrors and transportation.

      Photo by John Sibley Williams, on transportation. Vienna, Austria

Portrait(s)

– on Mirrors

I’ve spent so long validating in cloud-shapes
a more intimate portrait of myself

that in the bathroom mirror I now see
an elephant passing into a giraffe
passing into my father.

-JSB

Invitation(s)

– on Mirrors

Slipped beneath my wiper
an invitation to festivities
held in the empty factory
I just left
where once mirrors were assembled.

-JSB

Learning to Swim

– on Mirrors

Consider the sea a skewed mirror
and churning your uncertain limbs through it’s waves
an attempt to untangle light.

The comforting density of bone and future
mean little here.
The world is too light
to trouble with tomorrow,
too buoyant to sink with you.

So bring the background forward.
Kick up ripples and silt through that secret face.
Distort it into accuracy.

Where your faces finally meet
you will float without need for movement,
as in the Dead Sea
but without the need for salt.
Water can be your single taut thread—
reflecting.

Later there will be plenty of time
to learn to walk.

– JSB

Author Biography

John Sibley Williams is a poet and literary publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and won the 2011 Heart Poetry Award. His chapbooks include A Pure River (The Last Automat Press, 2010), Door, Door (Red Ochre Press, 2011), Autobiography of Fever (Bedouin Books, 2011), From Colder Climates (Folded Word, forthcoming), The Longest Compass (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), and The Art of Raining (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, forthcoming). Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly.

Unshod Quills’  first featured artist, Las Vegas, Nevada photographer Eva Steil shoots here
on lipstick, mirrors, beasts and When We Two Parted.

Please click each photo once, and then again on the following page, to see in greater detail.

Eva Steil, "Liets." Photo taken January 12th, 1989 in Atlanta, Georgia. On the theme of mirrors.

"Liets 2." Eva Steil on the theme of mirrors

"Eve 2" - self portrait of Eva Steil on the theme "When We Two Parted"

"Lip Blotter," Eva Steil. On the theme of Lipstick

"Tara in Fur," Eva Steil. On the theme of beasts

Artist Biography

Eva Steil is a Las Vegas based photographer best known for at once intricate and stark self portraits and for her portraits of other artists. Eva utilizes digital photography, but the bulk of her work has been done on film, and she continues to work in this medium today. A member of the Unshod Quills Writer Collective, Eva also writes poetry and lyrics. Eva wants to make your art gallery a Ground Zero for an exhibit. She can be found here.

Anthony Bondi on "When We Two Parted"

On the topic of Beasts - Anthony Bondi

On the topic of lisptick - Anthony Bondi

On the theme of sonnets - Anthony Bondi

Artist Biography

Anthony Bondi is a Las Vegas, Nevada based artist who has focused on using digital imaging technology to make collages addressing the unique character of Las Vegas.  Repurposing imagery through collage led to repurposing industrial products in large scale interactive art pieces for Burning Man. This process led to the Tickle-Me-Tunnel, a tactile-rich interactive children’s toy. It is available for purchase through Amazon and other sources.  www.anthonybondi.com  Contact Anthony via Facebook. Anthony is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

Oregon poet Chad Reynolds

photo: Chad Reynolds on "When We Two Parted"

Vegan Warning

– on beasts

Don’t give your heart to a vegetarian. They think meat is gross.

CR

Bellhop For Your Baggage

– on transportation

You begin by holding the handbag
But the luggage multiplies
In your sweaty grasp
Piling upon your shoulders
’til face and knees are sagging
All for the price of shagging,
Degraded from knight to squire
All for dread Desire
But a bell’s hop between
True love and valet
Loaded down with
Purest Samsonite
Unpacking damage
On snake skin scales
A contest of scars
When you could be
Sharing the stars
They carry on
And on and on
Dirty laundry packed away
For ease of burden
Heedless of the things we belong to
Our own faded treasures
Chained to our soul
Cargo of stacked satchels
In a lake of Merlot
Trunks within trunks
Faces in valises
Every love lost
Butchered in my memory
Fine limbs folded
In Louis Vitton
Chunks shopped from the past
Packed for posterity
Patched with everywhere you’ve been
The place where you drag it all out
And put it away
Is the place you call Home

CR

Panning For Gloss

-on lipstick

Fantasy becomes history
Scripting out the history
Technicolor tapestries
Factory made beauty’s mastery
The surface is the max factor
The only honest man an actor
Celluloid mask on our memories
Liquid glass within all mammaries
Mundane superficialities
Dominate our realities
13 channels of shit on the TV
Commercial breaks won’t set us free
Seeking true connections
With electric reflections
We fuck and fight and die
Before a cold glass eye
As absent as the god that made us
Plastic ideals degrade us
No brave new world arises
Another coat of shit on the same old crisis

CR

Author Biography

Chad Reynolds is a cornfed madman with a heart of gold. Born in Kansas and bred in Las Vegas, he currently lives in Salem, Oregon with his cat Lazarus. He has been writing and performing poetry since 1985. Chad is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.